


Alternatives

by goldarrow



Series: Timeline!verse [1]
Category: Primeval
Genre: Fix-It, Gen, M/M, Multiple Timelines
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-26
Updated: 2019-08-26
Packaged: 2020-09-27 01:28:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20399434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldarrow/pseuds/goldarrow
Summary: Helen is playing games with timelines.





	Alternatives

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Primeval belongs to Impossible Pictures, not me. Unfortunately. Sigh. I mean no harm, I make no profit except satisfaction.
> 
> A/N: Set about 2 weeks after the end of S2. Fix-it

Pain was becoming an old friend. When there was pain, I knew I was alive. When the pain went away, I couldn’t tell whether anything around me was real or just a dream or just simply a memory of life now departed forever.

Was I alive? Everything was black around me; there was no light, I could see no movement. But I could breathe. I could feel the air moving in and out of my dry throat, down my parched windpipe and into my lungs as my chest expanded and contracted. 

Now I could hear the slight rustle of clothing moving toward me. I turned my head in the direction of the sound, but there was still only blackness. I had to be alive. There wouldn’t be sound if I wasn’t.

There was the softest of touches to my right bicep and the numbness receded abruptly and the pain returned. My hand, my arm, my shoulder, all burning. Flames crawling along under the skin, searing flesh, charring bone. I gasped with the agony. It was too excruciating to even cry out. My throat closed and I couldn’t breathe. I could only sob, tiny little pants that barely gave me enough oxygen to stay conscious. When would this end? Would it end?

How many hours, or days, or even weeks had I been in this place? I couldn’t remember. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to remember. Whatever had put me here, whatever was keeping me here, was something I wasn’t sure I could cope with.

“I knew you were already awake.” The voice was familiar. Smooth, feminine, slightly mocking. “You’ve never been able to control your breathing. It gives you away every time.”

“Wh-who are you? Why are you doing this?” I couldn’t seem to control my vocal cords, either. Every word came out in a different octave; some rasped, some squeaked, one even growled. More like the growl of a cub than a lion, but a growl nonetheless. For some bizarre reason, I was vaguely proud of that growl. 

I turned my head further, homing in on the sound of the woman’s chuckle. Then I realised something: the pain was receding a little. I still couldn’t move, but I could at least breathe. I could feel the floor under my buttocks, and the wall against my back and left side. I was sitting. On a floor, in a corner.

I realised something else: my eyes were closed, the lids glued together with a crust that I didn’t want to identify. I started blinking a little, very quickly; tiny movements to encourage any tears I might be able to generate. After a few moments of effort, I could peel open my eyes enough to see her in the dim light.

Helen.

My teacher. My lover. My guilty secret. My secret loss. And in the end, the architect of my current anguish. 

“Go away.” I closed my eyes again. Perhaps everything would go away if I did that. Perhaps I could drift on the nothingness until there was nothing left and this would finally be over.

“I have a use for you.” The sound of her voice grated on me now. 

“You always did.” It had taken me too long to realise that I meant nothing to her. That I was just a tool in her kit, to be pulled out and used when she needed to hurt Nick. Nick Cutter. Her husband, my friend. I betrayed my friend for what I thought was her love, only to be left in the end with neither her love nor his friendship.

“That’s the way of all things,” she replied sharply. “The strong use the weak; the strong prosper, and the weak, well, the weak are used up. You should have worked that out by now.”

I turned my head to look at her again. Her face, that familiar face I once loved, was hard these days. The expression didn’t change a millimetre as I looked into her eyes. The eyes of a predator. Of a shark. I know she saw my pain, but it didn’t seem to have the slightest effect on her. I started to shrug, then realised it would be a very bad idea to move my shoulder. So I took a deep breath instead.

“What are you going to do to me?” Not that I cared very much. Having lost Ryan to the Permian, and Nick to her revelation, I wasn’t particularly invested in any sort of future she might have in mind for me.

“I’m going to give you back to them.” This time her voice contained the slightest hint of seductiveness.

I shuddered. A mistake. The pain in my arm leapt to life again, the swelling that I could now see stretching the skin almost to the splitting point. It wasn’t black, but it was horrendously infected. I could see the red lines under the taut skin, and the trails of them as they disappeared into my armpit. That wasn’t good. But after I stayed perfectly still for a few moments, the throbbing eased off again.

“Why?” Again, not that it really mattered, but at least talking to her kept my mind off of my pain.

She laughed. I bit back a shiver; the sound of her amusement made me want to hide. It was not a nice laugh. Not. At. All.

“They need something else to think about for a while,” she said. “They’re getting too close to working some things out. And having you back will really throw them for a loop.”

“Why?” I was becoming interested in spite of myself. What possible reason could they have for caring whether I was alive or dead? I’d been pretty much dead to them for months, even before the cage room. Dear God, the cage room.

Being bitten and clawed, feeling as if I was being torn into pieces before Helen showed up and dragged me through an anomaly to this place. Having my wounds bathed and roughly stitched. Being dropped into this room to live or die. Being handed food and water and a few tubes of antibiotic cream, to use myself if I could manage it. Then left alone.

In spite of my need to remain perfectly still, the memories washed over me and made me tremble. Which, of course, woke up the flamethrower that had taken up residence in my arm again. The blaze was high enough to send me back into the darkness for a moment. But this time, I fought my way out. I had to know what she was going to do to Nick and the others.

“You’ll find out,” she whispered in my ear. “I will tell you, though, that not all futures are written in stone.” 

She kissed me, softly and lovingly, as she had in the beginning before everything about her had been revealed as twisted. For the first time ever, I didn’t respond. At all. She pulled back and laughed again. That same laugh that made me want to dig a hole in the floor and pull it in after me. 

“There are worlds beyond worlds.” With that final cryptic statement, she stood up and sauntered over to the door. When she looked back at me with a smile that a crocodile would envy, I actually wished for a moment that I had a rifle and two arms that worked. But I didn’t, so she strode out of the room, leaving the door open.

Leaving me frustrated. I could see out, but there was no way in hell I was going to be able to make it across the room and down what sounded from her footfalls like a very long corridor. I couldn’t even stand up. Just the thought of doing so birthed an ominous throbbing in my arm. So I relaxed back against the wall. Waiting.

By the time Helen had been gone long enough for me to almost drop back into my safe little black hole, I started to hear noises again. Clatter of boots, rustle of clothing, murmur and mutter of voices growing louder and more distinct every second. 

I didn’t have the energy to call out. Didn’t care enough. I wasn’t actually sure I wanted to be found. My condition wasn’t exactly conducive to optimism about future prospects of health. And besides, if Helen wanted me to be found, then perhaps it would be better if I weren’t. So I simply waited.

The noises came closer and closer. I could make out the clatter as doors were kicked open now, and individual voices as they called out the empty status of each room. There was nowhere for me to go, so I sat and watched the door, wondering who would be the first through and if he would shoot me where I sat. I wouldn’t blame him, whoever he would be, if he did. I think I would shoot. To see someone you thought dead, now alive, in a place where Helen Cutter was known to be? Instant death sentence would be the sensible alternative.

Finally, the noises paused outside my room as the people outside realised that this door, the last door, was already open.

A slight rustle, a hesitation, then two men burst through the door, one slipping quickly to the right, the other just as rapidly to the left. Two assault rifles pointed directly at my face. Interesting how much larger the muzzles looked from this angle. 

“Hi, guys, long time no see.” My still-rough voice didn’t quite make it up to the level of insouciance I had planned, but I hoped that I’d managed enough to either make them accept me or make them shoot me. Whichever. The pain in my arm was starting to take over my entire world again. They’d better hurry up and decide what to do with me, or I was going to pass out and miss all the fun of the decision-making.

“Fucking hell.” That was Lyle. Finn simply looked gob-smacked.

I grinned, holding back a chuckle by sheer willpower. Grin was acceptable. Grin didn’t make the arm combust. Chuckle, on the other hand, was petrol on an electrical fire. Not. Fun.

“Hey, Lyle,” I whispered. “Where you been?”

A new voice said, “Your funeral.” 

Now that wasn’t possible. In no way, shape, or form was that possible. Without conscious thought, I looked at the man in the doorway and did my best to stand up. Of course, it didn’t work. I managed to make it about a centimetre off of the ground, and then my entire body locked up in a total and absolute paralysis of pain.

As everything went first the red of agony, then the white of numbness, then finally the black of total oblivion, all I could do was whisper, “Ryan?”

xXx

I woke up an undeterminable length of time later. I still hurt everywhere, which I didn’t appreciate, but at least I wasn’t in absolute agony, and my arm didn’t feel as if it was packed with a ton of incendiaries. In fact, it was suspiciously numb.

Even though I wasn’t sure I wanted to know, I opened my eyes and looked down at my right side. There was a long tube there, not a cast but definitely a lot of sterile dressings. Okay, that was a good sign. They hadn’t lopped the arm off, anyway. I still wasn’t sure why it didn’t hurt, but just the fact that it seemed to still be attached was enough for the moment.

“How do you feel?” Cutter. 

Thank God it was Cutter and not . . . No, not going there. Not yet. Ryan was six months dead. Any relationship we’d started to tentatively build had died with him. Oh. Crap. On the other hand, maybe not so good that it was Cutter, considering how we’d parted. Being knocked down and fired by him, then showing up with Helen, of all people, then knocking him down in turn - and hadn’t that felt great for a moment? - and locking him out of the cage room. . . shit. I took a quick peek at him and he was smiling at me. Smiling. At. Me. Totally openly. Okay, that was different.

“Um, pretty rotten, actually.” I decided honesty was definitely going to be the best policy in this bizarre situation.

“Arm hurts?” That was actually concern.

“Um.” I really needed to up my game on the conversational plane. “No, actually. Just sore all over, feverish feeling. Generally crappy.” I took a deep breath, which for the first time didn’t wake up the bastard with the flamethrower. “My arm is numb.”

Cutter nodded. “They’ve done a temporary nerve block on it. It was pretty bad. They had to do a lot of debridement and general cleanup. You’ve a record number of stitches holding it together right now.” 

He hesitated and I braced myself for the bad news.

“It’s going to take quite a while for you to regain the use of it. I’m sorry.” He reached out and clasped my left hand in both of his.

I stared at the hands, then at him. Something was seriously off here. But when he started to look uncomfortable, and his grip loosened, I realised I didn’t want to change it. I turned my hand over and returned the clasp. Good choice; he smiled, no, he positively beamed.

I wondered if shaking my head would kick-start my brain again, but decided that was an experiment best left for later. Contenting myself with a slightly concerned look, I answered, “A while? Regain the use?”

He looked seriously relieved. “You will get full use back; well, full or almost full,” he said quickly. “Any problems will be so minor they won’t make a difference. But it is going to take time.”

I relaxed back against the pillows. “Time; I think I have plenty of that, now.” 

Still confused and unsettled, I examined his face. He looked younger than my Cutter, not physically, but emotionally. Like he’d looked at the beginning. Before that fucking Permian trip. Oh, crap. Was I in some alternate universe? I needed Connor in the worst way right now. And that was probably the weirdest thing I’d ever thought. Then I remembered how Cutter had acted after that trip. Like he’d ended up in an alternate universe . . . oh, crap, really, oh, crap.

This had to be an alternate world, if I’d actually seen Ryan alive. Did this Cutter not know about me and Helen? How much had changed? Had the me in this universe not slept with Helen? How the fuck could I ever find that out? Never mind. Not now. Okay, here we go. My mind stopped spinning and I focussed back on the current world. Cutter was looking very disturbed, so I grinned tiredly and answered his expression.

“Yeah, sorry. I think I might be from somewhere else.” There, that was a good start. Oh, maybe not; Cutter was looking confused now. 

“Cutter, how did I die, here?” Better get it over with. This should tell me how close our worlds are.

“Helen,” Cutter started, and boy was his voice cold. He cleared his throat. “Helen and some friends of hers from the Ministry were playing with the anomalies and the creatures. She and this ‘Leek’ I think his name was, were going to let creatures loose all over the city. We, and the Special Forces group assigned to us at the Home Office, got to them before they could put their plan into action.”

He started stroking my arm slowly with one hand, touching me as if to make sure I was really there, so I held hard to the other one. When he jumped, I smiled in encouragement. I had to know. It might seem slightly sick, perhaps, to want to find out about my own death, but I had to know.

“We were running across a bridge over one of their holding rooms; there were creatures below us, smilodons, raptors. We were trying to get to the main doors to lock them in. One of the raptors jumped up and caught my leg. Gashed it open; it started bleeding.” He was staring at our hands again, not looking at me. 

That wasn’t what I wanted, so I tugged quickly on his hand, and squeezed harder. 

Cutter cleared his throat. “It tried to pull me over. You grabbed me and swung me away, pushed me across to the wall. But your foot slipped in some of the blood and the creature managed to catch you off balance.” His eyes were filled with tears. “It took you down before I could get to you. Dear God, Stephen, I watched them tear you apart.” By this time, the tears were streaming down his face. 

I felt a deep sense of shame and guilt. The Stephen in this universe was someone I would like to have been, but wasn’t. Again I wanted to find a hole and pull it in after me.

“I’m so sorry,” I whispered. Might as well get it over with. “I wish I were the man he was. But I’m not.”

“You’re Stephen,” he said firmly, tears drying. “That’s all that matters.”

“No, it’s not.” Time for confession. There was no way in hell I was going to let Helen tear up this Cutter’s memory of his friend. If it had to happen, I was going to do it myself.

“Cutter, your Stephen was a much better man than I am.” 

He tried to pull his hand away, but this time I was the one who hung on. It jarred my sore body, and I hissed, so he stopped.

“I have to tell you, right now. I don’t want to, but in my world this secret destroyed us.” Cutter tried to interrupt, but I kept talking. “Nick, back when I was Helen’s student, I had an affair with her.”

I stopped, waiting for the explosion. The response I got was more an explosion of my expectations.

“I know,” he said calmly, almost with amusement. “The you here told me about it right after she broke it off. In fact, that was one of the reasons she took off. You - he - was going to make an official complaint.”

All I could do was stare at him. Everything I’d held inside for eight years, everything I’d hidden, every lie I’d told came crashing down on me. My own cowardice had brought it all on me. If only I’d told him. Oh, fuck. I could feel myself starting to shake, the tears building up in my eyes.

“Oh.” I wanted to say more, I really did. But I couldn’t get another word out past the huge lump in my throat. 

Cutter gathered me close, his voice like gravel in my ear. “I’m assuming you didn’t turn her in? That you kept it quiet?”

I nodded past my own tears. So much wasted time. My most important friendship in the entire world, and I’d thrown it away like dirty dishwater.

“Never mind,” Cutter said softly. “I think you’ve learned your lesson, yeah?”

I nodded again, embarrassed that I was gulping like a child after a tantrum.

He let me back against the pillows and smoothed my hair. “Stephen, you have a fresh start here, if you want it.”

“I do. You have no idea how much I do.” Half of my wishes had come true. Maybe, just maybe there might be hope for the rest.

There was. I looked up to see Captain Tom Ryan standing in the doorway, still alive, and from the look on his face, still my lover.

Fuck Helen’s plans. I didn’t care. A new life, and a new chance to make things right. I had everything I needed, right in this room.

End


End file.
